In this week's issue: the University of Chicago suffers a data breach affecting students, current and former employees, a point-of-sale vendor probes a potential data breach affecting its customers, a campaign is pushing card issuing banks to promote Chip and PIN and in the latest Rippleshot blog post, we pull 10 more data breach statistics that you need to see.
University of Chicago Suffers Data Breach
First reported by HackRead, The University of Chicago has joined the growing list of public and private universities to suffer a data breach. According to a letter from the university, officials first learned of the breach on January 22, 2015 when hackers gained unauthorized access to a University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division database. The stolen database contained employee identification numbers, names, social security numbers and usernames belonging to students, former and current employees.
Point-of-Sale Vendor NEXTEP Probes Data Breach
On Monday, news broke that a Troy, Michigan-based point-of-sale vendor for airports, casinos, corporate cafeterias and restaurants that its customers may have been compromised in a data breach. NEXTEP Systems was informed by law enforcement officials after various financial institutions began to see fraudulent activity on payment cards used at soup eatery chain, Zoup, located primarily in the northern half of the United States and Canada. At this time, the scope of the data breach is still unknown but NEXTEP President Tommy Woycik believes that not all of NEXTEP’s customers have been impacted by the breach.
Campaign Wages Issuer Pressure Towards Chip and PIN
As U.S. cardholders are slowly introduced to EMV (Europay,MasterCard and Visa) chip cards in 2015, a consumer-issues strategy group is pushing issuing banks to support Chip and PIN along with chip and signature. Based out in Washington, D.C., Consumer Policy Solutions started a consumer-focused campaign titled “ProtectMyData.org.”
Led by Consumer Policy Solutions President, Debra Berlyn, the campaign highlights the enhanced security of Chip and PIN when compared to chip and signature cards. By requiring consumers to possess both the payment card and the PIN associated with with said card, it makes it much more difficult for fraudsters to use the stolen cards.
Rippleshot Content: 10 MORE Data Breach Statistics You Need To See
Last month, we put together ten data breach statistics that should have your attention. In this week’s Rippleshot blog post, we’ve put together ten more data breach statistics that should have your attention. With over 1 billion records exposed by data breaches in 2014, organizations need to be asking themselves WHEN, not IF they will be breached.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. If you missed the last Data Breach Ripples email or want to share these with friends or colleagues, click HERE!
